Our people

Both current and future employees are crucial stakeholders for Outokumpu, as their enthusiasm and commitment is a fundamental part of the Group's business. Input from employees is an essential feature in Outokumpu's goal of making corporate responsibility an integral part of all its business operations. Outokumpu's success is based on our people.

Principles

Outokumpu’s ethical principles described in Outokumpu’s Code of Conduct build on the equal treatment of all people, and there is zero tolerance for any kind of discrimination, whether it is based on ethnic origin, nationality, religion, political views, gender, sexual orientation or age. This is also promoted in remuneration, following the principle of equal pay in equivalent tasks.

The Group endorses the values of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. All of the major Outokumpu locations are situated in Europe, the US and Mexico, where risk related to human rights are not considered to be high. Outokumpu follows the spirit of international labor treaties and condemns the use of forced and child labor.

Outokumpu maintains a consistent policy of freedom of association. All employees of the Group’s operations are free to join trade unions in accordance with local rules and regulations. More than 80% of our permanent employees are covered by collective agreements.

Diversity is high on our agenda for the coming years. A transparent and unified resourcing process is the way to ensure equal opportunities. This is reflected in introducing a “50-50” recruitment ambition to build a sustainable talent base comprised equally of men and women. At the moment, some 14% of Outokumpu employees are women.

Performance management

Outokumpu has a clear target in managing performance: that every employee has a performance and development discussion with their manager every quarter. This is to help people understand their role within the “big picture” by creating transparency, setting targets that support the achievement of our common goals, managing team and individual priorities, and providing continuous feedback on performance. As the performance and development discussions alone will not ensure high performance, managers were encouraged to maintain continuous team dialogue with regular team meetings and quarterly business updates focusing on the overall situation for the Group, business areas and units and key priorities to increase involvement. In 2017, this discussion process was unified. 100% of administrative employees in applicable countries had a discussion with their manager. Of all employees, 53% had a discussion with their supervisor. Compensation and benefits

In terms of compensation and benefits, Outokumpu has an overall framework and principles defined by Corporate Human Resources. Outokumpu’s intention is to provide a competitive base salary for all Group employees based on the scope of their role, individual performance and in line with local labor market and agreements. Remuneration practices and compensation levels regarding different positions are analyzed and evaluated systematically. Typically, base salary levels vary according to the stage each individual has reached in their career.

There are no globally applied indicators of equal remuneration between women and men, but for example in Finland, Germany and Sweden men’s and women’s salaries are analyzed regularly. For the UK, please see more information in Outokumpu's UK gender pay report 2017. The aim of the comparison is to achieve statutory equality in wages and salaries, where the amount of pay is relative to the work responsibilities and competence and not the gender of the employee.

In addition to base salaries and employee benefits, Outokumpu has in place short-term incentive plans which are clearly linked to the overall business targets and the financial performance of the company. Global short-term incentive plan covers some 1,000 employees. Additionally, the business areas can develop solutions to support the needs of their business that are competitive according to the local market practices. Outokumpu also had established the Performance Share Plan that covers some 150 key employees where share rewards are paid based on the company’s financial performance.

Training, development and talent management

Outokumpu provides learning opportunities to the employees in the form of job rotation, on-the-job training and specific skills training as well as training programs. As safety always comes first in our operations, safety is a key area where the company offers training to its employees. Outokumpu promotes job rotation across the organization to develop employees and their competences and has an international assignment policy and guidelines for longer and shorter postings.

Outokumpu undertakes a talent review process that allows a systematic review of the talent pipeline across the company and within particular disciplines. This process helps to identify both potential resourcing gaps and competence needs for future training and development as well as retention of the knowledge. For large scale organizational changes resulting in significant job reductions, Outokumpu has experience of a very systematic approach in establishing a social plan, including outplacement, community support and severance. Outokumpu Talent Council convenes quarterly to follow up on mobility and rotation of the key personnel, development of diversity plans and potential successors as well as keeping up the talent pipeline.

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About Outokumpu

Outokumpu is the global leader in stainless steel. Our customers use it to create civilization’s basic structures and its most famous landmarks. Stainless steel is sustainable, durable and designed to last forever.

We aim to be the best value creator in stainless by 2020, through our competitive edge of customer orientation and efficiency. The foundation of our business is our ability to tailor stainless steel into any form and for almost any purpose.

Outokumpu employs 10,000 professionals in more than 30 countries, with headquarters in Helsinki, Finland and shares listed in Nasdaq Helsinki.

Recycling maximized

Stainless steel is 100% recyclable. It is the most recycled material in the world, and its quality is preserved in the process.

Our stainless steel contains the highest proportion of recycled content on the market, and we keep pushing this further to conserve virgin raw materials. Increasing the share of recycled material is the single most effective measure to reduce our environmental impact.

Using Outokumpu’s stainless steel decreases our customer's own carbon footprint and that of their customers.